The European Union is fastly embracing digitization, recognizing it as a crucial step towards a more efficient and connected economy. Blockchain, digital identity, and verifiable credentials are key technologies driving this transformation, providing secure and transparent solutions for various industries.
Steps Towards Digitizing the European Union
The European Union is leading the charge towards digitization, recognizing it as a crucial step towards creating new opportunities for innovation and growth and ensuring that Europe remains competitive in the global marketplace.
The Digital Europe 2030 strategy is the newest and most ambitious initiative, aiming to make Europe a global leader in digital transformation by 2030. It encompasses all the plans shortly described below and more, focusing on developing and using cutting-edge technologies, improving the workforce’s digital skills, and creating a single digital market that benefits all EU citizens and businesses.
Aligning with this strategy, Slovenia Slovenia has recently announced documents and plans heavily emphasizing the digitization of public services, among other.
Working towards this goal, the EU has taken significant steps, such are the implementation of several directives, strategies and projects:
– The Digital Single Market strategy, launched in 2015, aims to create a single market for digital goods and services within the EU. To remove barriers to cross-border e-commerce and improve access to online goods and services, the EU has taken several measures, such as eliminating unjustified geo-blocking, enhancing the functioning of the e-commerce market, and ensuring the protection of consumers in the digital market.
– European Blockchain Partnership, created in 2018, aims to promote the growth, development and use of blockchain technology with the EU and serves as a platform for cooperation between EU Member States and the EU Commission on technical and regulatory issues related to blockchain technology.
– European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) promotes and coordinates the development of blockchain technology within the region, ultimately creating a secure and interoperable EU Blockchain Infrastructure.
– eIDAS 2.0 (EU Digital Identity – EUDI) is expanding the usability of cross-border authentication, e-signatures and e-seals and introduces the concept of digital wallets. Project EUDI and EBSI are complementary and EBSI’s profile aligns with the recently published EUDI wallet architecture and reference framework v1.0.
We are proud to be active members and one of the lead architects in EBSI, giving us a unique market position to advise and develop technologies to power this shift in the EU’s digitization initiatives.
Blockchain, Digital Identity & Verifiable Credentials as Key Enablers
New technologies, such as blockchain, digital identity and verifiable credentials, are vital in advancing the EU’s economy, providing secure and transparent solutions for various industries, with the digital identity providing a way to verify an individual’s identity in a privacy-preserving manner, reducing the risk of fraud, identity theft, and other types of cybercrime.
– Blockchain is a decentralized ledger that allows for secure and transparent recording of transactions, reducing the risk of fraud and increasing transparency in transactions. All this makes the technology ideal for use in finance, supply chain management, or healthcare, namely any industry where the need for transparency is rising.
– Digital identity helps us securely authenticate a person’s identity and streamline customer onboarding, ID verification, and access management processes. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) is a digital identity model that allows individuals to control their own digital identity and personal data, making it a natural fit for the EU’s efforts to enhance privacy and security in the digital economy. This is why the EU is actively promoting SSI-based solutions for digital identity, with initiatives such as the EBSI and EUID now taking the forefront.
– Verifiable Credentials are a form of digital proof that can be used to verify a person’s qualifications, skills or other attributes. As verifiable credentials can be easily shared and securely stored, they simplify individuals and organizations to verify and share important information, making the technology particularly useful for any industry where verifying qualifications is a crucial part of the process.
Companies can benefit from these cutting-edge solutions to improve their services, stay ahead of the curve, and test their relevance by participating in tenders and programs.
Netis has already been included in several tenders where we act as a blockchain and new-tech provider. With our expertise and experience, we can assist you in this regard or participate in new tenders. All this will help us create a more efficient and resilient economy in future years!